I have written and re-written this first blog entry numerous times in my head, and I guess the best way to preface it is to say first and foremost I haven’t ever written a blog before and secondly I haven’t written anything I wasn’t receiving a college credit for in awhile so bear with me on this…

My story on how I came to live in a van and work on this project really begins with a flat tire, a no service exit on the Colorado Interstate, and a dead cell phone. Growing up in Jersey, I learned many fine skills. Questions about fake tans and blue eye shadow? No problem. Need lessons on cutting people off in traffic? I’m your girl. Changing flat tires in a snowstorm? Not so much. Stranded and sandwiched between the undesirable options of cozying up next to an anonymous trucker and a snowy trek in unseasonable clothes, I’d definitely been in finer form. As I was pondering potential hypothermia over potential sexual exploitation, a Soprano’s style SUV pulled up next to me, revealing the glazed over, goofy grins of my soon to be favorite Colorado couple and somewhere between a call to AAA, a bottle of Smirnoff, and a sled ride in a canoe, our friendship was formed.

Fast-forward a year and some change…

Like a lot of college students, I was half-heartedly meandering my way through an English Lit. degree. I had so many classmates who aspired to cubicles, 401K’s, and a prefab subdivision house with a shiny Volvo in the driveway and I myself was starting to get more used to the idea of two weeks paid vacation a year as acceptable, and even lucky. Now, I realize that I am young in age and in the ways of the world, but something seemed innately wrong with working your ass off every day from 9 to 5 to save money so you can “enjoy” your life on social security and retirement benefits when you are 65. I was nannying for a family in such a situation, when I realized that I didn’t want to be so exhausted that family time revolved around what was happening on Big Brother 5 and frozen lasagna.

I was seeing a chef for a country club in Vail during this time and I would drive every weekend to see him and sit at the bar and talk to the patrons until his shift was over. I remember this one, older successful real estate agent who I would often find myself debating with and he would always say, “One day you’ll see. You’ll want security. You’ll want the cubicle and to have a nanny instead of being one.” After he said this, I realized that my life was starting to become a cycle of work, class, and weekend trips to the boyfriend (aka taking care of someone else’s kids because they are too tired to do it, earning a degree I wasn’t sure I wanted, and a weekend relationship). I also realized that I was more prepared for life in a cubicle than I thought, and in fact had been building my own mental cubicle for some time. But the question remained, what was this cycle working towards? What was I working towards, versus what did I want to be working towards?

Enter, Dan Gainsford, dismantler of people and life questioner extraordinaire. The workweek was over, college was out for Christmas, and I was once again on my two-hour car ride for the holidays. Almost every time I headed towards Vail I would take a quick detour for the cabin of the aforementioned favorite couple (Kat and Jeff) to eat, drink, and do something different with people who were in no way involved in the cycle I had created, and were in fact very anti-cycle and not afraid to say so. Kat and Jeff are the type of friends who are annoyingly and beautifully always trying to make you see what’s in front of your face whether or not you want to or are ready to It is important to note at this juncture in the blog, that one of the things I love most about these particular friends is there unwillingness to have their lives lived any other way than exactly the way they want it and fuck anyone who tells them they need to do things differently. They are also the type of people who want to make sure that their friends live up to their full potential and don’t walk down a road just for the sake of having somewhere to go.

I believe in hard work, and working for something that we believe is making us better people and the world a better place, but I also believe that we need to redefine what we see as progress and re-evaluate whether what we are working for is really what we want or a pre-programmed idea of what media, government, church, and authority figures tells us we should want. The tricky part is, in a world where we are bombarded with advertising 24/7 (television, billboards, radio, magazine, the sides of buses, internet) and we spend all day, every day with it how do you separate our minds from it enough to even figure out what we want in the first place. It is crazy to me that we live in a world where pharmaceutical companies advertise for drugs on television. I often think about what Betty Freidan wrote about in the Feminine Mystique when many of the housewives of the 1960’s were starting to forsake what they had been told was expected of them. Many times, doctor’s prescribed Valium and told them they were depressed instead of looking at the root of issues and I wonder if maybe that is exactly what we are doing today. People are overworked, spend less time with their families and the time we do spend with them is usually in front of a television. (There will be another blog about modern day dinner time to come). If I were a pharmaceutical company right now I would be advertising for mental health drugs too. I am sure business is great.

I am getting off track, so I am going to return to that night I walked into Kat and Jeff’s and their constant barrage of pushing and prodding me to question what was making up the direction of my life. Sometimes, when we fight the hardest against people’s questioning, it is because we ourselves are uncomfortable questioning it, and this is why we get defensive, which I was. Looking back, it is strange to me how everything came together the way it did, because from the moment I walked in the door my bullshit was on display and up for discussion. This is mainly because my friends have no shame in discussing deeply personal issues (mine, theirs, yours if you met them) with anyone like they are talking about whether or not it is going to snow tomorrow. Being friends with Kat and Jeff is kind of like having your clothes ripped off in front of strangers (embarrassing or exhilarating depending on what kind of person you are).

Now though, I believe this is how things should be done to a certain extent. We should show all sides of ourselves, the beautiful and the bullshit, instead of making pleasantries so those we meet can decide for themselves whether or not it’s worth the time or the effort. In trying to decide on how to get from point A to point B, point A being me walking in the door and point B being me living in a van, I realized that there is no specific timeline for things. Like everything, it all comes down to the fact that sometimes you see people for who they are and we find ourselves in a different place and on a different path, so in a way I am grateful for Kat and Jeff’s little game of Fear Factor: meeting new people edition.

When I talk about it with Dan, he says that we are all mirrors of each other and I believe that sometimes we look at people and see what changes we need to make, and often times they are changes you wouldn’t have considered otherwise. That is the only way I can really explain how I went from having a flat tire on the side of I-70 to working on this project.